Going to a festival alone: how to do it (and find people)

The line-up drops and there it is: the band you have loved since you were nineteen, on a Saturday night in August. You send it to the group chat. One person has a wedding, one says "maybe", one replies with a thumbs up and is never heard from again. The ticket sale is on Friday, and you are sitting there with your card out, wondering if buying one ticket is a bit sad.

It is not. Going to a festival alone is completely normal, and the music is the easy part. What makes it hard is everything around the music: getting there with a tent, pitching it on your own, the first evening before you know anyone. Sort those with a few people going to the same festival, sharing the lift, the pitch and the costs, and the rest of the weekend is yours to do exactly as you like. Finding those people is what TravelMatch is built for.

Is going to a festival alone weird?

It is one of the first questions people type, and the answer is in the crowd itself. A festival is one of the few places where a whole field of people is deliberately standing next to strangers for three days. Nobody at the front of the main stage is checking who came with whom.

What does feel strange, the first time, is the in-between: queuing for the gates with no one to talk to, eating on your own on a hay bale, walking back to the tent at one in the morning. That is not weirdness. It is just the part of the weekend that friends usually fill without you noticing. Plan for those moments and the whole thing changes.

There is also an upside nobody mentions until they have done it. Going to a music festival alone means you see every act you want, leave when you are bored, and never spend an hour in a field negotiating which stage to go to next.

Going to a camping festival alone: the tent is the real problem

Most tips for going to a festival alone are about confidence. The practical problem is heavier, and it comes in a tent bag.

A camping festival alone means carrying your tent, your sleeping bag, your food and your drinks from the car park or the coach drop-off to the campsite, often a long walk, and then pitching it in the dark if your travel ran late. It means leaving your things in a tent nobody is watching while you are at the stages. And it means paying for the fuel, the parking or the coach seat on your own.

All of that halves, or better, the moment you are three or four. One person drives, the others split the fuel and the parking. Two carry the tent, two carry the drinks. You pitch next to each other, so someone knows where your tent is and you have a meeting point that is not "by the big flag". You do not need to spend the whole festival with these people. You just need them for the parts that are easier together.

Tips for going to a festival alone

A few things make a solo festival noticeably easier, and none of them is about being brave.

Arrive in daylight if you possibly can, so you can pick a pitch and learn the campsite before it gets dark. Take a photo of something fixed near your tent, because tents all look the same at night. Carry a power bank: your phone is your map, your ticket, your torch and your way of finding people. Look at the site map and the clashes before you go and decide which two or three sets you will not miss, so the rest of the time you can wander.

And talk to the people pitched around you on the first afternoon. Asking to borrow a mallet is the oldest icebreaker on any campsite, and it works because it asks for something small. If you would like more on that, we have a whole piece on how to meet people while travelling solo, and one on what to do when travelling alone gets lonely.

Is it safe to go to a festival alone, and going as a woman

We cannot promise you anything about a crowd of strangers, and anyone who does is selling something. What we can do is point to concrete precautions.

Read the festival's own information page before you go. Reading Festival's, for example, sets out a zero tolerance policy, asks everyone to look out for each other and to speak up if something does not feel right, and tells you to report inappropriate behaviour to festival staff, security or the nearest AIR Hub. Find where those points are on the site map on day one, not when you need them.

Beyond that, the usual things matter more than any trick: keep your drink with you, keep your phone charged, tell someone outside the festival where you are camping, and agree a check-in time with anyone you are camping near. Many women going to a festival alone feel easier sharing the journey and the pitch with other women; we cover how small women-only groups come together in solo female travel groups, and the honest version of meeting people you do not know yet in is it safe to travel with strangers.

Going to Reading festival alone

Reading comes up again and again in these searches. Its official website gives the 2027 dates as 26 to 29 August, at Richfield Avenue in Reading. Its information page also sets the age rules and what you can bring, so read it before you buy.

One route in that people forget is working the festival. Hotbox Events, which runs volunteering at Reading, asks for three eight-hour shifts spread from Wednesday to Monday, gives every volunteer at least two of the main festival evenings off and has its own volunteer campsite. You must be 18 or over, and Hotbox currently asks first-timers for a refundable £95 deposit. You will not see every set, but you arrive already part of a team.

The ways to go, side by side

How to find people going to the same festival

The table shows the trade-off. Going alone gives you freedom and leaves you with the logistics. Volunteering gives you a team and costs you shifts. The friend of a friend is easy but random.

On TravelMatch you post your trip with the destination and dates, say Reading from 26 to 29 August, or ask to join someone else's going the same weekend. Whoever created the trip decides who comes, and before accepting anyone you see their profile, your affinity score and reviews that only people who have travelled with them can leave. Profiles include pace, budget, preferred transport and accommodation, the age range people like to travel with, which counts towards affinity, and whether they prefer a women-only, mixed or any group, a preference others read rather than an automatic filter.

Once the group is together you have a group chat to sort out who drives and where you pitch, an itinerary for the sets you all want to see, polls for the decisions, and shared expenses for the fuel, the parking and the gas canister someone always forgets. For the money side, our guide to the app to split travel costs explains how to keep it fair. TravelMatch is free and books nothing.

You can absolutely do the whole weekend alone, and plenty of people love it that way. But if the only thing between you and that Saturday night set is the thought of carrying a tent across a field on your own, that part has a solution. The band is not going to wait for your group chat to reply.

On TravelMatch you post your festival trip with the dates and see who else is going that weekend before you accept anyone. It is free.

→ Post your trip · Free, in a minute.

Reviewed in October 2026. Reading Festival's 2027 dates (26 to 29 August, Richfield Avenue) from readingfestival.com, and its zero tolerance policy and reporting points from readingfestival.com/info, both checked on 20 October 2026. Hotbox Events volunteering terms at Reading (three 8-hour shifts from Wednesday to Monday, at least two main evenings off, 18 or over, £95 refundable deposit for first-time volunteers, volunteer campsite and parking, friends on the same shift pattern) from hotboxevents.com, checked the same day. Festival rules and terms change each year, so check them on the official site before you buy.